Such Stuff
by Merlin Missy
Summary: Everybody dreams but Stark.  For the Stark ficathon.


Such Stuff  
a Farscape story  
by Merlin Missy  
Copyright 2004  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine. So not mine.  
  
For **apathocles** in the Stark ficathon. Possible spoilers up through "Bad Timing." A great big "THANK YOU!" to **astrogirl2** for multiple betas and helping me whip this puppy into shape. Yay ficathon!

* * *

Everyone dreams but Stark.  
  
Stark knows this because all the dreams, at night, by day, during the somnolence  
caused by frenzied loving in someone's quarters, all those dreams pile in like puppies.  
D'Argo's child and Rygel's feast and Chiana's brother and Crichton's Isa's Cream,  
these roll and tumble through Stark's head while the time drifts by.  
  
Aeryn dreams.  
  
Stark listens too deeply to Aeryn's dreams sometimes. She dreams of blood and death,  
and Stark trembles at the anger, pulls the blanket closer to hide away, is always unable  
to pull completely away from the torment. Often, too too often, Stark sinks even  
deeper into those visions in the hope that, deep within the images of horror, Aeryn will  
also grant some glimmer of peace, of sanctity. And sometimes, she does.  
  
When the dreams are over-loud, Stark wanders the corridors, touches Moya. The  
Leviathan dozes between starbursts, twinning her dreams with Pilot's, so that Stark  
cannot tell where either begins or ends or just goes on. Stark likes these dreams, can  
fall into them and can feel the slide of interstellar particulate matter tickling across  
Moya's hull, at the same time sensing a parent touch Pilot's young head in affection.  
Stark loves them so much, loves these dreams and these souls, and will do anything to  
protect them.  
  
Can do nothing.  
  
Stark is mad. Everyone knows it, whispers it not quite out of earshot, and points. Ever  
since ... No.  
  
Bad thoughts do bad things, and Stark has had enough bad thoughts to last ten  
lifetimes. And perhaps that's where the problem lies.  
  
Stark is not corporeal, not completely, not even much. Thought creates reality; this is  
truth, something known by Stark's people and shared as mother-wisdom crooned into  
cradles. Stark has seen too much reality. So, sometimes without meaning to and  
sometimes meaning to very much, Stark ... drifts.  
  
The first truism of any telepathic race is that one's own mind is the easiest and hardest  
to read. Stark drifts and reads Stark's own mind:  
  
_He is Stark the Banik slave, and Scorpius tortures him again and again in the  
Aurora Chair, demanding secrets of Katratzi and more. Stark hates him and Stark  
loves him a little, and Stark sits in his own filth in the Chair and in his cell, gibbering  
madly.  
  
She is Stark the freed prisoner, and Crichton loves her more than any of those others  
because of their captivity together on the Gammak Base. Crichton tells her things  
about his home, and names stars after her, and she is loved.  
  
He is Stark the Dominar, ruler of a million worlds, with women as he desires them and  
the Peacekeepers beneath his heel. When the Luxans come to parlay, he swarms his  
forces over their world too.  
  
She is Stark the Peacekeeper, and her weapon is her mind, as she rips and tears through  
the puny defenses of her enemies. She rises to Commandant, plays with men, dreams  
of a single peaceful government throughout the universe.  
  
It is Stark the half-breed Sebacian/Scarran, double-raced and double-gendered, and it  
hates both species with a passion that drives it to alliance after alliance in hope of  
vengeance on both. When it meets its Sebacian father, it squeezes the life from him,  
blood dripping over its dead white hands, and it finds consummation in his death.  
  
She is Stark the Luxan, and she seeks vengeance for the death of her husband.  
  
He is Stark the Delvian, and his father was taken away by the invaders.  
  
He is Stark the Human, and he is lost from home forever._  
  
If Stark dreams, Stark dreams Stark's own dreams, separated only by universes and  
bound far tighter by the bond of one incorporeal and indivisible mind. Really, there is  
little wonder why the others believe their own frightened murmurs of Stark's madness.  
Truth is harder than rumor, and truth requires belief in a fractured multiverse.  
_This_ truth cannot be expressed save in fantastical mathematics that only  
Crichton cares about anyway. Madness is easier, to say and to do and to believe.  
  
And Stark can pretend that same lunacy, almost always, can not slip for weekens at a  
time. Can smile vapidly and caper, and listen. Can not try to explain.  
  
It is only at night, or what passes for night, when the lights are dimmed and the others  
are dreaming and Stark's feet are tired from wandering, only then is it difficult to  
pretend these other realities are not just as real as this one.  
  
Stark slips into the bed, eyes already closed, pressed lips trying not to mumble  
impossible secrets, and maybe maybe Aeryn will not be roused, but no, this time she  
wakes. She looks at Stark and oh! She is sweet perfection in her bald nakedness and  
Stark loves her so much!  
  
Aeryn asks, "Are you all right? Was it the same dream?" Aeryn thinks Stark dreams,  
does not understand.  
  
And Stark kisses Aeryn with deep passion, and Stark wraps her small arms around  
Aeryn but she cannot ever reply. 


End file.
